Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart

There’s a basic and universal human need to feel like we belong. In this ever more isolating world of sharply divided news media and working alone, the opportunities to make connections are reduced. So in this need for tribal belonging, we all too often demonize The Other, the people we do not know and often times fear. This is quite dangerous to democracy according to our guest Howard Ross whose new book is Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart. There are solutions, ways to build bridges, such as asking what people are afraid of. He says the right demands liberty, the left demands justice and neither one alone enables a democracy to function. Ross also argues that “Now is the best time in history but we act as if it’s the worst.” Much to learn from this podcast.